Compatibility Issues With Native Instruments Plugins / Kontakt Player

[luckykat]

Been having major compatibility issues with Native Instruments Plugins like Komplete Kontrol and Kontakt Player. Every time I save a project and re-open it, the synth & preset (example: Kontakt > Monark synth > Donruth Synth) have disappeared. There is no sound & it didn't save. Everything else in the project saved. Their plugins are also unbelievably slow & often cause crashes on Ableton. Plugins like Session Strings 2 don't even work.

This is obviously crushing my morale, wasting so much time & now effecting client work.

Anyone know how to fix this?

[DunedinDragon]

Without knowing a bit more about your configuration it's hard to give you any ideas about what might be going wrong. I've been using Kontakt in Ableton for a couple of years and have maybe 40 or so various instrument plugins including Session Strings 2 as well as various Synths such as Massive, Vocalise and several others and have no problems with any of them. Most of my plugins are from Native Instruments but I also have quite a few from other vendors such as 8DIO or Spitfire that are NKS compatible and they all work fine. I've worked with them in Kontakt 6, Kontakt 7 and Komplete Kontrol under Ableton 10 and 11. Never an issue even when upgrading.

My workflow is simple. I drag and drop either a Kontakt instance or KompleteKontrol instance onto a MIDI track. I then open the Kontakt or KK instance from the device shown at the bottom of the page, and select what instrument will be used for that track inside the Native Instruments interface. From there it's normal MIDI operations in Ableton and tweaking the various configuration settings of that instrument in the Kontakt or KK instance. All Native Instruments plugins are managed and maintained through Native Access, and non NI plugins through those vendors library manager.

My desktop computer is an ASUS PC with Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6700 CPU @ 3.40GHz and 16gb of memory. I have 2Tb of internal SSD memory drives where all of my instrument plugins are stored and I have no problems with CPU or latency, and I have upwards of maybe 60 or 70 different projects built this way.

However in all my cases I'm using full Kontakt and Komplete Kontrol, not the free Kontakt player which may be what's limiting you.

[luckykat]

Without knowing a bit more about your configuration it's hard to give you any ideas about what might be going wrong. I've been using Kontakt in Ableton for a couple of years and have maybe 40 or so various instrument plugins including Session Strings 2 as well as various Synths such as Massive, Vocalise and several others and have no problems with any of them. Most of my plugins are from Native Instruments but I also have quite a few from other vendors such as 8DIO or Spitfire that are NKS compatible and they all work fine. I've worked with them in Kontakt 6, Kontakt 7 and Komplete Kontrol under Ableton 10 and 11. Never an issue even when upgrading.

My workflow is simple. I drag and drop either a Kontakt instance or KompleteKontrol instance onto a MIDI track. I then open the Kontakt or KK instance from the device shown at the bottom of the page, and select what instrument will be used for that track inside the Native Instruments interface. From there it's normal MIDI operations in Ableton and tweaking the various configuration settings of that instrument in the Kontakt or KK instance. All Native Instruments plugins are managed and maintained through Native Access, and non NI plugins through those vendors library manager.

My desktop computer is an ASUS PC with Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6700 CPU @ 3.40GHz and 16gb of memory. I have 2Tb of internal SSD memory drives where all of my instrument plugins are stored and I have no problems with CPU or latency, and I have upwards of maybe 60 or 70 different projects built this way.

However in all my cases I'm using full Kontakt and Komplete Kontrol, not the free Kontakt player which may be what's limiting you.

Wow, this is first time I've heard this but good to know that it is possible. I have an almost identical PC config. I also put my plugins on the
D: drive (I thought that might have been the issue at first. All plugins bought, no pirated software. Some 3rd party Kontakt developers have caused issues in the past but Monark is on Komplete 13 so no excuse. Same for Session Strings 2 (takes forever to load, crashes & you can't use the Rhythm mode or humanizer. It is literally as if they are all closed beta tests not commercial software.

I literally just closed a project & re-opened it & Monark on Komplete Kontrol was erased as if you were opening from scratch. It deletes the preset & synth patch every time you close the project. So irritating & there has to be a fix. I do notice that Kontakt is showing up as Kontakt AND Kontakt 7 in VST and VST3 so wondering if there's maybe a clash & it is confusing NI plugins.

Do you know why they have Komplete Kontrol and Kontakt Player as 2 separate plugins? The plugins show on Komplete Kontrol but won't open because you need to use Kontakt. Surely only one plugin needed??

[DunedinDragon]

Well you really haven't told me a lot of important things like what version you're using of Ableton (I'm on Ableton Live 11 Standard. Kontakt 7.Komplete Kontrol ver 2.91). Kontakt and Komplete Kontrol are two different programs because they're meant to be used in different ways. Komplete Kontrol is really more oriented toward using a MIDI keyboard rather than a traditional PC keyboard interface and actually has a lot of additional functionality so you can use your keyboard as a DAW control surface if you've got the right kind of MIDI keyboard.

Since Ableton insists on using a very outdated forum software that won't allow me to provide screen shots unless they're from the internet I'll have to just describe them. I didn't do anything special to set this up. I just followed the documented installation process from Native instruments and Ableton.

Under Collections I have two different categories. The 'Instrument' category along with several others is what comes with Ableton and has all of it's built in instruments such as the Drum Rack, Drum Synth, Instrument Rack and so forth. That's not where my Native Instruments plug ins are located. There is a separate collection for Plug-ins which contains external plugins. In that area I have a Native Instruments category which, when you expand it, shows Komplete Kontrol, Kontakt, Kontakt 7 , Massive, Raum, and other NI things. I also have separate categories for different plug in vendors such as iZotope or Spitfire Audio and contains plug ins from those vendors. When I use Kontakt 7 on a track I simply drag and drop the Kontakt 7 or Komplete Kontrol item from the Native Instrument Plugin category onto that Track Title Bar. I then double click the titel bar to display the devices on that track. One of those devices will be the Kontakt or Komplete Kontrol device. I then click on the wrench icon on that device which opens a separate window with either Kontakt or Komplete Kontrol the same as you would get if you opened them from the PC desktop. If yours isn't operating that way you need to go back and follow the installation procedures documented with Ableton.

When I've put together my initial project I do a File/Save Live Set As from Ableton and I specify a project folder name where Ableton creates and places all my audio and MIDI files in for that project. Each MIDI file is associated with a Native Instruments plug in and that's saved along with the Ableton project file inside the project folder and gets restored when I open it so that my Ableton project file restores all the midi/audio, Native Instrument plug in and it's settings associated with the different MIDI tracks. If yours isn't operating that way you have something messed up with how you have Ableton configured.